


Left Hand of God

by lynndyre



Category: Van Helsing (2004)
Genre: Angels, Best Friends, Cameos, Case Fic, Demons, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 20:15:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynndyre/pseuds/lynndyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Van Helsing and Carl return to London in pursuit of a demonic apparition known as Spring-heeled Jack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Left Hand of God

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Highlander_II](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Highlander_II/gifts).



Carl could insist all he liked that he wasn't a field man, but he'd chosen to be a friar rather than a monk. And he'd made that choice because he wanted to see more of the world than the Vatican. Part of him _did_ want to see the world, to have adventures, make a difference, see his inventions in action.

On the other hand…

"Van Helsing, why is it that every time I let you drag me off to London I end up as _bait_?" 

"That reminds me, you never did tell me where you learnt to wear a corset. Or how to select the proper shade of lip rouge."

" _That_ falls under the seal of the church. So there."

"You can't claim confessional if you're not a priest." Carl could hear Van Helsing chuckle somewhere overhead.

"I could be! I could be a wonderful priest, if I weren't stuck in the middle of this godforsaken city freezing all my digits off in the worst smelling fog imaginable, waiting to be accosted by monsters that haven't even the decency to make a timely appearance!" He tucked his hands further under his arms, and wished he'd worn gloves that covered his fingertips. "This trip I require no zombies, no _entirely illogical_ pits of lava, and ABSOLUTELY no molestation of Queen Victoria."

"I think I can safely promise the last, at least."

Carl subsided, muttering, into his cowl. Truthfully, thus far, this venture had proceeded much more smoothly than Van Helsing's expeditions were wont to, which had Carl all the more on edge. 

In the hope of preventing Cardinal Jinette's receipt of any further letters along the same irate lines as those from Notre Dame, Van Helsing was carrying an official seal as an agent of the church, and had even remembered to present himself at Scotland Yard to alert the local gendarmerie that he was in the area.

Though not, Carl noted, until after their stakeouts had turned up nothing of interest for three nights in a row.

The rat-faced Inspector at the Yard had listened to their case with half his attention, and made what Carl considered a wholly unnecessary comment on the relative practicality of a doctor as companion and assistant, rather than a monk. Carl was a _scientist_ , thank you very much, and besides that he was a friar, not a monk, and perfectly useful in any number of capacities.

Such as bait.

Carl sighed, and looked longingly towards the pub on the next block, with its light and warmth and cheerful noise. He straightened his shoulders and turned down the sidestreet, where the gas light had gone out. Halfway down the lane, he turned to look for Van Helsing, and something grabbed him from behind. He thrashed, graceless and inneffective, as cold, clammy, sharp fingers groped at him. He managed to turn, and found himself facing a countenance like a painted grinning mask, with red, evil eyes.

Carl screamed.

A second later, Van Helsing dropped straight from the rooftop onto the thing's back, knocking all three of them to the cobblestones, with Carl lowermost. "Shackles! Van Helsing, hobble it before it can jump away."

The thing flailed against Van Helsing's hold, kicking out with strangely booted feet, but Carl heard one click, curled in on himself as he caught an elbow to the ribcage, and heard the other. Then Van Helsing fell back, and Spring-Heeled Jack leapt to his feet and straight for the roof, catching on the eaves and scrambling upwards.

"Well, he didn't go straight over the building. That's something." Van Helsing rolled his shoulders, extended the steel claws on his gloves, and went straight up the wall. A second later both of them had disappeared over the peak of the roof. Carl turned and ran for the connecting street.

On the main thoroughfare, Carl stumbled backwards, trying to dodge the pieces of roofing tile, and possibly chimney, which Van Helsing seemed bent on knocking onto someone's head. He craned his head back to see where Van Helsing was, where the demon had got to. He took another step back, still watching the rooftops, and backed straight into a blond Englishman with an armful of books. "Sorry! Sorry, just watching the... er..." 

"Quite all right, my dear boy. They are making rather a spectacle of it. Still, he does have things in hand, which is just as well. I don't think Crowley's even awake, but it's no excuse for allowing that sort to take over the city."

"Er. No?" 

"Good luck to you both, if he wouldn't think it presumptuous of a principality."

"I don't think so." Carl cast about the skyline. "He isn't much for people, but he treats everybody about equally. Unless they're evil."

Carl missed the hasty sideways glance, and slightly nervous cough. "Of course. Well." The man transferred his books to one arm in order to point. "That way, I think. Have a pleasant hunt."

Carl followed the man's gesture, and just caught the spurt of blue fire as it jetted out from the eaves two sidestreets away. He offered a 'thank you!' over his shoulder, but under his breath considered the confluence of 'pleasant' and 'hunt' unlikely in the extreme.

He ran, following the noise, roofing tiles, and flames whenever the dark and fog were too thick to see the men themselves. Nearly to the bridge, turning, following the course of the river. Thank Heaven the shackles had hampered the thing, or Carl doubted even Van Helsing would have kept up with it.

But watching from the street level while Van Helsing and the demon fought across the embankment, Carl was running out of ideas. Holy water, in any form, angered but did no lasting damage- ditto crucifix, salt, sunlight, silver, his most elaborate inventions for the deployment of holy ammunition were only useful in so much as that ammunition was effective.

On the mud below, Van Helsing sprawled backwards, landed badly, rolled back to his feet and ran forward again. The demon pranced angrily in its hobbles and struck out again. Whenever it found a break in Van Helsing's attacks, it spat blue flames at its feet, and Carl trusted his own smithing, but even holy-forged steel would only stand up to so much.

"Think, think, think. You're a genius friar, you have to come up with something." He tugged at his hair, shifted from foot to foot as Van Helsing dodged and darted forward again, clawed gloves at the ready. "Genius friar. Genius. Friar. Friar. Of course! I'm a friar!"

Cardinal Jinnette had called the thing a demonic apparition. Carl fumbled through his pockets, past string, paper, wire, scissors, pencil, until he found his rosary, and wrapped the warm wooden beads around his cold hands. His lips moved through the _Pater Noster_ and _Ave Maria_ while he wracked his brain for something more suited to the situation. Saint Michael the Archangel was the patron of warriors, but Carl had never made a particular study of him. Raphael for healing, which –praise God – neither of them needed. But maybe, since he was Van Helsing's namesake…

The Jack's high-heeled boots began to smoke in the mud, and it stamped, thrashing against the hobbles as the leather boiled away to show cloven hooves underneath. Its claws had grown out like knives. It sprang forward again and struck out at Van Helsing, first with claws and then a great bounding somersault, so that its scorched hooves caught him full in the chest and flung him onto the stone steps at Carl's feet.

"O blessed Archangel Gabriel, we beseech thee, intercede for us at this, the bank of the Thames, that we might not all be killed by a demon. As thou didst defeat the tribes of the Nephilim, and incidentally Dracula, so through thy prayers and hopefully rather a lot of smiting we may obtain the benefits of thy holy strength, and sing the praise of God forever in the land of the living."

Van Helsing shook himself, and pushed back up onto his feet. "Carl, are you making things up again?"

"I'm _adapting_. As any good scientist should. Did you know your eyes are glowing?" 

Van Helsing blinked, and his eyes continued to shimmer like Carl's bottled sunlight. He tilted his head and gave Carl a strange look. "Keep praying."

Carl swallowed, and started from the beginning of the litany.

Van Helsing ran back down the embankment, pulling the heavy silver crucifix from under his coat. The gold from his eyes was starting to seep into his hair, filament by filament. He shifted his grip on the cross – Carl blinked at the brightness – and when he opened his eyes again it was a sword, blade glowing enough that it reflected, shining, in all the mists coming off the water. It washed the muddy, mucky bank in silver.

The Jack pranced its hooves, tossed its ragged cape, and screamed like a thousand tom-cats.

And then Van Helsing impaled it.

And Carl couldn't breathe, and couldn't see, and didn't know any more.

When he woke up, it was to Van Helsing's hand patting his cheek. In the dark, in the smelliest city next to the smelliest river Carl had ever encountered, Van Helsing smelled like ozone and sunlight. Carl brushed ineffectively at his clothes and tried to think.

"So! Another successful resolution to be seriously edited for the reports?"

Van Helsing looked sideways, where the tide was seeping in, covering the cracked, burnt crater where the Jack had been. Water and fog were already hiding everything away. "If you don't mind."

Carl stuck out his hand, waited for Van Helsing to pull him up.

"Buy me a proper supper, then."

**Author's Note:**

> I've conflated the stories of Spring-Heeled Jack with the story of the Devil's Footprints - while Spring-Heeled Jack was reported throughout the 1800s after his first appearance in 1837, and was usually an urban phenomenon, the latter happened in February 1855, in Devon.
> 
> Carl's version is, you can probably tell, not the actual Litany of St Gabriel the Archangel. The real one is available in a few places online, including [here](http://www.catholicyouth.freeservers.com/litanies/angels/st_gabriel.htm). Also, the story of Gabriel defeating the Nephilim is from the apocryphal Gospel of Enoch - which is the same text that names Gabriel as the Left Hand of God.
> 
> Forgive me my Good Omens and Sherlock Holmes cameos! With the multitextual basis for the movie, I couldn't resist. :D  
> Also present in London that night, though Carl never noticed him, was a large-nosed, dark-haired man going by the name of Piers Benson, formerly Benjamin Adams, lately of America. Mr Benson remembered Gabriel Van Helsing from a very very long time ago, and decided not to get involved.


End file.
